Altitude sickness strikes thousands of individuals every year resulting in problems from sleep disorders to pulmonary edemas to death. These individuals are skiers, mountain climbers, or merely business travelers to high altitude regions. The key to dealing with the altitude sickness is taking advantage of the body's ability to gradually acclimatize through a transition through progressively higher altitudes.
Unfortunately, most individuals do not have the time to acclimatize. For example, and individual flying to a high ski hill will typically spend a few hours of flying and driving to be at the ski hill thus depriving the body of the opportunity to acclimatize.
The physiology of altitude sickness and the adjustment to altitude is covered in numerous textbooks. An excellent one is “Medicine For Mountaineering” by James Wilkerson, M.D. (copyright 1992, published by The Mountaineers of Seattle, Wash.) from which the immediately following discussion is liberally taken.
The body adjusts to altitude by increasing respiratory volume, increasing the pulmonary artery pressure, increasing the cardiac output, increasing the number of red blood cells, increasing the oxygen carrying capability of the red blood cells, and even changing body tissues to promote normal function at lower oxygen levels.
At an altitude level of 3,000 feet the body already begins increasing the depth and rate of respiration. As a result of this more oxygen is delivered to the lungs.
In addition, the pulmonary artery pressure is increased which opens up portions of the lung which are normally not used, thus increasing the capacity of the lungs to absorb oxygen. For the first week or so, the cardiac output increases to increase the level of oxygen delivered to the tissues. However, that particular adjustment fades after the first week.
The body also begins to increase the production of red blood cells. Other changes include the increase of an enzyme (DPG) which facilitates the release of oxygen from the blood and increase the numbers of capillaries within the muscle to better facilitate the exchange of blood with the muscle.
About 80% of the adaptation is finished by 10 days.
Slowly increasing the altitude from sea level to the target altitude appears to be the best solution.
The most difficult time for altitude sickness sufferers is evening when the primary function is sleeping. This is most likely due to the fact that the breathing rate decreases during sleep and thus the coping mechanism of increased respiratory rate is somewhat thwarted.
Gamow (U.S. Pat. No. 5,398,678) teaches a portable chamber to facilitate the function of an individual at higher altitudes by increasing the pressure within the chamber above that of the ambient. Lane (U.S. Pat. No. 5,101,819) teaches a method of introducing nitrogen into a flight training hypobaric chamber to simulate the lower oxygen concentrations at higher altitudes for fighter pilots.
The inventor is not aware of any other art that discusses the use of a portable device for helping an individual to adjust to altitudes.